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Vilna Judges Not Impartial Jewish Deputies Complain in Parliament: Jews Sentenced Heavily and Non-je

January 14, 1932
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Deputy Dr. Rosmarin raised the question of the attitude of the Vilna judges in regard to the proceedings against persons charged with participation in the anti-Jewish outbreak of last November, when he spoke to-day in Parliament on behalf of the Club of Jewish Deputies in the Judicial Committee of the Seym on the budget of the Ministry of Justice. The judges had shown by their verdicts, he said that they could not be impartial when it came to dealing with people who held their own views about the Jews. Some of the judges, he said, are forgetting that justice must know no favour or bias, and they are handing down verdicts in accordance with their own feelings.

Why does the Ministry of Justice, he went on, permit the antisemitic press for some months now to carry on an agitation inciting people to commit acts of violence against the three million Jews in Poland?

The policy of allowing antisemitic papers to preach violence against the Jews, he warned the Government, could not but lead to very terrible consequences. He appealed to the Government to put a stop to the anti-Jewish boycott agitation which, apart from its danger, was in flagrant contradiction to the Constitution.

The Club of Jewish Deputies introduced interpellations to-day in Parliament to the Ministers of the Interior, of Education and of Justice, tracing the course of events in connection with the anti-Jewish outbreaks of last November, and setting out the complaints against the authorities, who it is complained, have failed to rise to the height of their office. Attention is drawn in the interpellations to the results of the trials in connection with the anti-Jewish disturbances in Vilna, the Jews being heavily sentenced and the non-Jews being acquitted.

The tension in Vilna continues, the interpellations declare, and the same National Democratic students who started the trouble, and were the ring-leaders of the anti-Jewish outbreaks, are still at the head of the anti-Jewish boycott agitation, preaching anti-Jewish violence.

We do not even know whether the Public Prosecutor is actually investigating the facts about the outbreaks, with a view to dealing with those who were responsible for the attacks made on Jewish life and property, the interpellations end.

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